B.C. Health Services: The Legacy After 18 Months (Unblj Forum: Recent Developments in Canadian Labour and Employment Law‪)‬

One hundred and thirty-five years after Parliament, in 1872, ended the legal characterization of registered unions as illegal combinations in restraint of trade; sixty-nine years after the New Brunswick Legislature enacted the Labour Act as the forerunner of contemporary provincial collective bargaining legislation; and a scant thirty-five years after Canada ratified the ILO's Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948, the Supreme Court of Canada released its reasons for decision in Health Services and Support--Facilities Subsector Bargaining Association v. British Columbia. (1) Other contributors to this Forum will undoubtedly explore and explain the significance of B.C. Health Services both in terms of its reversal of position in relation to collective bargaining as an aspect of the Charter right to freedom of association and in terms of its broader implications for understanding the scope of that right in other contexts. My contribution is far more modest--it is to examine the impact of B.C. Health Services since its release (8 June 2007 to 31 December 2008). Like all Supreme Court of Canada decisions, B.C. Health Services has had both direct and derivative impacts: direct in the sense that it resolved a legal point of contention between the parties to the litigation--so there is an aftermath to report-and derivative in the sense that the decision has impacted on our understanding of freedom of association and thus on the rights of persons asserting Charter associational rights in other contexts.